Europe has its sights firmly fixed on Copenhagen (Source: Attila the Hun at Flickr)

Barely a month after the end of the Poznań conference, the European Commission has attempted to set the agenda for the next COP/MOP, which will be held in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The move came in the form of a Communication issued last week that sets out the Commission’s views on a wide range of the issues facing the UNFCCC as they aim to reach agreement over post-2012 arrangements.

Three of the main elements of the Communication are as follows:

Developed countries need to cut their emissions substantially below 1990 levels. The EU’s view is that developed countries should set targets that would reduce their emissions by 30% by 2020.

Developing countries need to set binding limits on their emissions. The Communication suggests a target reduction of 15-30% below ‘Business As Usual’ emissions by 2020.

The Clean Development Mechanism needs to be reformed and its use phased out in some countries and sectors. The Commission is advocating reform of the CDM to address concerns that many current CDM projects currently in operation or in the pipeline are not likely to their expected level of carbon reductions. It also believes that a sectoral, rather than a project-level, approach would be more efficient in some of the more advanced developing countries.

The document also contains a number of other proposals, including requiring all countries to develop adaptation strategies, bringing international shipping and aviation into the scope of the international agreement, and a dramatic increase in energy research and development.

The Commission’s statement reads like a shopping list of all the key components that would be required for an effective post-2012 climate regime. A pessimist might argue that it also reads like a list of reasons why a deal is unlikely to happen at Copenhagen. Despite the increased level of political will to address climate change in the new US administration, there is widespread doubt over whether a cap-and-trade system can be approved within the first year of the Obama presidency, and it is not clear that the administration is eager to set a US emissions cap that is anything like as tight as the EU desires. Similarly, China’s Premier Wen Jiabao played down expectations that China would commit to any binding targets for greenhouse gas reductions during his recent visit to Europe. And getting developed countries to commit to significant funding streams for CDM-based mitigation in developing countries will be far from easy given the current stae of their economies.

The Communication is an indicator of the EU’s desire to maintain momentum after Poznań and to set the agenda at the beginning of an intense year of discussion. It will be engaging in an enormous amount of negotiation over all these issues between now and December, and as with its own Energy and Climate package, any eventual deal will inevitably entail compromise. Europe has persistently striven to be a leader in forming global climate policy, and it will be anxious to continue in that role during 2009. But it will also be acutely aware of the old wise-crack that a leader without followers is just a guy taking a walk.

World Bank Global financial & climate crises

Last week the World Bank released a report on Latin America’s responses (or possible responses) to the challenge of climate change with the promising title: Low Carbon, High Growth – yet, beyond providing some informative analysis of the costs of climate change and distribution of responsibilities in the Latin American region, the policy conclusions rest on a shaky assumption: ”an appropriate international policy environment in which a critical mass of high-income countries take a global leadership role…”

Just for the sake of a brief overview – the report outlines current manifestations of climate change in the Latin American region. Most significant and most worringly are the melting of the Andean glaciers that jeopardises ecosystems and water supply; the bleaching of coral reefs, hosting 65% of Latin American fish species, providing coastal protection and attracting tourists; apparent damage of the ecologically important Gulf Coast wetlands in Mexico; and the increasing possibility of a climate-related dye-back of tropical, borreal and mountain forests in the region.

These phenomena will have significant ecological, social and economic consequences, that even if not yet apparent are somewhat quantified in the report: increases in diseases such as malaria and dengue fever by 70,000 cases over the next 50 years; an estimated sevenfold rise in average economic losses from hurricanes; region wide agricultural losses that could amount to 18% of GDP (net present value of a one-time shock), to name the most significant.

Who is responsible for what in the Latin American region? – around 85% of the region’s emissions are concentrated in six countries: Brazil and Mexico together account for almost 60% of GHG emissions (and GDP). Argentina, Colombia, Peru, and the República Bolivariana de Venezuela for another 25%. A similar picture emerges if you exclude land use change with the exception that Brazil’s contribution falls from 46 to 34% and Mexico’s rises from 13 to 21%. In other words, although emissions from land use change make up almost 50% of overall emissions, their significance vary hugely from country to country.

Overall, the report concludes that Latin America’s reduction in “carbon intensity of energy” has been almost entirely compensated by a growing consumption of energy per unit of output.

What ultimately matters to define who should do what, is the rate of growth of emissions and the ratio of emissions to GDP. Based on this analysis, the report concludes that some LAC countries have a relatively high mitigation potential in energy (e.g. Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and República Bolivariana de Venezuela) while for others (e.g. Brazil and Peru) the potential for reducing GHG emissions lies mainly in LUC or agriculture.

How? – “by means of implementing policies and programs to conserve its large forests and to maintain its relatively clean energy matrix” (page 35) – The report outlines a suite of policy areas that need specific attention; yet, given that it covers an entire region it cannot provide any details on actual implementation on most of these, although citing some interesting case studies. Most critically, however, the policy conclusions and thus the outlook on Latin America’s ability to actually pursue “high growth with low carbon” rests on the assumption of “an appropriate international policy environment in which a critical mass of high-income countries take a global leadership role…” (p. 80) Poznan, as the Climatico report shows, has been an international set back where exactly those most proudly countries who showed particular leadership in pointing out their leadership (e.g. Germany) are putting their heads in the sand.